What’s so great about Spain? Assessing UNESCO World Heritage inequality.

Some places are more valuable than others. We often regard places as being of high or unique value if they possess high biological diversity, ancient cultural artefacts and structures, or outstanding geological features. These valuable places deserve special recognition and protection. The sad reality is that when we are driven by immediate needs and desires, these special places are lost.

The natural world, and the wonderful diversity of plants and animals, is on the losing end of a long and undiminished conflict with human population growth, development, and resource extraction. We don’t notice it when there is ample natural space, but as nature becomes increasingly relegated to a few remaining places, we place a high value on them.

The same can be said for places with significant cultural value. Ancient temples, villages, and human achievement are too valuable to lose and we often only have a few remnants to connect us to the past.

In either case, natural or cultural, when they’re gone, we lose a part of us. That is because these special places tell us about ourselves; where we come from, how the world shaped us, and what unites all of humanity. Why did the world cry out in a united voice when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, even though many of those concerned people were not Buddhist? The answer is simple –the expansion of Buddhism out of India along ancient trade routes tells us why many Asian nations share a common religion. They tell us about ourselves, the differences that interest us, and the similarities that bind us. The same can be said about the global outcry over the recent destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.

Before and after photos of the taller of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Image posted by Carl Montgomery CC BY-SA 3.0.

Similarly, the natural world tells us about ourselves. The natural world has constantly shaped and influenced what it means to be human. Our desires, fears, and how we interact with the natural world are products of our evolution. If I flash a picture of a car to my 500-student ecology class, very few students, if any, screech in fear. But if I flash a photo of a hissing cobra or close-up of a spider, invariably a bunch of students squirm, gasp, or scream. Rationally, this is an odd response, since cars are the leading cause of death and injury in many western countries. Snakes and spiders kill very few people in Canada.

These special places deserve recognition and protection, and that is what the UNESCO World Heritage designation is meant to achieve. To get this designation for a site requires that countries nominate ones that represent unique and globally significant contributions to world heritage, and are adequately protected to ensure the long-term existence of these sites.  World Heritage sites are amazing places. They represent the gems of our global shared heritage. They need to be protected in perpetuity and should be accessible to all people. Though some I have visited seem like they are loved too much with high visitation rates degrading some elements of Heritage sites.

Examples of UNESCO World Heritage sites. A) The Great Wall of China. B) The Gaoligong Mountains, part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan. C) Angkor Wat in Cambodia. D) An example of a site that may be too loved -Lijiang in Yunnan. All photos by Shirley Lo-Cadotte and posted on our family travel blog -All The Pretty Places.

UNESCO World Heritage sites should also be representative. What I mean by this is that they should be designated regardless of national borders. Heritage sites are found on all continents across most countries –though a number of politically unstable countries (e.g., Liberia, Somalia, etc.) do not possess Heritage sites, likely because they lack the organization or resources to undertake the designation application process, and they lack the governance to ensure a site is adequately protected. But there are substantial differences in the number of World Heritage sites across nations[1]. Some countries, because of inherent priorities, national pride, resources or expertise, are better able to identify and persuade UNESCO that a particular place deserves designation.

The distribution of the number of UNESCO World Heritage sites across countries and the top ten.

Why do we see such disparity in the number of World Heritage sites -where many countries have few sites, and a few countries have many sites? This is a difficult question to answer, and to do so I took an empirical approach. I combined data on the number of sites per country with Gross Domestic Product (GDP)[2], country size[3], and country population size[4]. I then ran simple statistical analyses to figure out what predicts the number of Heritage sites, and identified those countries that are greatly over-represented by Heritage sites, and those that are very under-represented. A couple things to note, the best statistical models included variables that were all log-transformed, I excluded the World Heritage sites that spanned more than one country, and I did not include countries that did not have any Heritage sites. The data and R code have been posted to Figshare and are freely available.

All three of GDP, area, and population size predicted the number of World Heritage sites. It is important to note that these three country measures are not strongly correlated with one another (only moderately so). So, larger, richer and more populous countries had more World Heritage sites. This makes sense –big countries should contain more unique sites due to random chance and more populous countries tend to have longer historical presence of organized states, and so should possess more cultural relics (especially China). GDP is more difficult to assign a reason, but high GDP countries should have robust national parks or other bureaucratic structures that assess and protect important sites, making them easier to document and justify for UNESCO.  GDP is quite interesting, because it is the single best measure for predicting the number of Heritage sites, better than population size and area. Further, neither country density (population/area) nor productivity (GDP/population) are strong predictors of the number of Heritage sites.

The relationships between the number of World Heritage sites and GDP, area, and population. Note that the axes are all log-transformed.

While these relationships make sense, it is also clear that countries are not all close to the main regression line and some countries are well above the line –meaning they have more Heritage sites than predicted; as well as some below the line and thus having fewer sites. When I combine the different measures in different combinations and look for the best single statistical explanation for the number of World Heritage sites, I find that the combination including GDP and population size, and their interaction (meaning that population size is more important for high GDP countries) is the best. For aficionados, this model explains about 65% of the variation in the number of Heritage sites.

Now, we can identify those countries that are over or under represented by UNESCO World Heritage sites according to how far above or below countries are from the predicted line (technically, looking at statistical residuals).

The deviation of countries from the predicted relationship between the number of sites and GDP and population (and their interaction). The top 5 over-represented and under-represented countries are highlighted.

The top five over-represented countries are all European, which means that given their GDP and population size, these countries have more World Heritage sites than expected. At the other extreme, countries under-represented come from more diverse regions including Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

An interesting comparison to think about is Germany and Indonesia. Germany has more World Heritage sites than expected (residual = +0.61) and is a moderately sized, high GDP country. Let me say, I like Germany, I’ve been there a half a dozen times, and it has beautiful landscapes and great culture. However, does it deserve so much more World Heritage recognition than Indonesia, which has fewer sites than expected (residual = -0.63)? Indonesia has spectacular landscapes and immense biodiversity and great cultural diversity and history. To put it in perspective, Germany has 35 World Heritage sites and Indonesia has just 8.

To answer the question in the title of this post: what’s so great about Spain? Well, it not only has beautiful and diverse natural landscapes and cultural history, but it appears to have the infrastructure in place to identify and protect these sites. It's place at the top of UNESCOs relative (to GDP and population) ranking of the number of World Heritage sites means that Spain's natural and cultural wonders are in good hands. However, for the countries at the other end of the spectrum, having relatively few World Heritage sites probably is not a reflection of these countries being uninteresting, or that they have little to offer the world, rather it is something more alarming. These places lack the financial capacity or national will to fully recognize those places that are of value to the whole world. The problem is that the globally important heritage that does exist in these places is at risk of being lost. These under-represented countries serve as a call to the whole world to help countries not just identify and protect heritage sites but to aid these countries with infrastructure and human well-being that empowers them to prioritize their natural and cultural heritage.

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[1] Here I use the 2015 database of World Heritage sites.

[2] From: The United Nations 2014 GDP estimates.

[3] From: Wikipedia.

[4] From: The United Nations 2016 projections.

Who should communicate the policy implications of ecological research?

Ecology is a science that tries to understand the world. How is the diversity of organisms distributed around the world? How do extreme climate events influence populations of animals and plants? How does the diversity of organisms in a landscape influence its function and the delivery of services to humanity? These are all questions routinely asked by ecologists and, importantly, are topics that most academic ecologists would believe are necessary for providing evidence for policy and management of habitats and natural resources. Yet policy makers, managers and practitioners seldom access ecology research. There is a research-policy divide that needs to be overcome.

Spanning the chasm between academic research and policy (from http://www.adventureherald.com/8-scary-suspension-bridges-you-do-want-to-cross/)

 

Many ecologists are reluctant to promote the policy implications of their research because they do not feel comfortable or connected enough to talk to non-academics. But if not them, then who is responsible to communicate the policy repercussions of their research?

The romanticized view of an untouched, pristine ecosystem no longer exists. We now live in a world where every major ecosystem has been impacted by human activities. From pollution and deforestation, to the introduction of non-native species, our activity has influenced every type of habitat. But this is where management and applied ecology have relevance. The study of human physiology has direct relevance for health science –that is, the value of this basic biological science is measured in its ability to help sick people, and not necessarily in its ability to better understand how healthy people function. So to does ecology need to be relevant for our ‘sick people’, that is, human-impacted landscapes. We have spent much of our collective effort studying intact, semi-natural systems, and this is necessary to understand the basic operations of nature. But now we are required to apply this understanding to improve ecological integrity and human wellbeing. We are surround by sick ecosystems and ecology is desperately needed to influence policy and management.

I just attended the joint symposium “Making a Difference in Conservation: Improvingthe Links Between Ecological Research, Policy and Practice”, put on by the British Ecological Society and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. This meeting was attended by a nice mix of academic researchers and practitioners, and covered a broad range of ideas, issues and solutions to overcoming barriers to implementing evidence-based policy. Overcoming these barriers requires communication, and scientists need to be at the table. In arguing the case that scientists need to communicate the policy implications of their research below, I take ideas and information passed on in a number of excellent talks, including from: John Altringham, Malcolm Ausden, John Beddington, Ian Boyd, Fiona Fox, Georgina Mace, Andrew Miller, E. J. Milner-Gulland and Des Thompson, and my own workshop on communicating research to maximise policy impact.

A guy who probably doesn't know what he is talking about, talking about policy. Perhaps a bit outside my comfort zone. (photo by Martin Nunez)

The Hurdles

The hurdles to the uptake of research and evidence into policy decisions are complex and multifaceted. On the scientists’ side, the hurdles are mainly a lack of training, experience and comfort promoting the policy implications of their work. In graduate school, very few scientists-in-training take journalism and media courses, and so are not well versed in the ways to communicate in a broadly approachable way. Instead, we are taught to communicate in technically precise ways that can only be understood by similarly trained experts.

On the practitioner side, there are a number of pragmatic and systemic limitations to the uptake of evidence into policy and management decisions:

1.       Structural: There is a lack of resources and time to read and synthesize scientific research. A lack of access because of expensive subscription fees, is a pervasive problem for individuals and small organizations.

2.       Systemic: Big organizations and agencies are complex and communication of best practices or idea sharing might be lacking. Frequent staff turnover means that research understanding and institutional memory is lost.

3.       Relevance: Practitioners need research relevant to their problem and trolling the impossibly large literature is not an efficient way to find the necessary information.

4.       Timescale: Practitioners and policy makers work at a variety of speeds, dictated by priorities, contracts, etc., and looking for resources may not work within these timeframes.

These limitations and the lack of relevant research uptake result in policies and management strategies that are not adequately informed by research, which can waste money and may not produce in the desired results. We heard about the requirement to build bat crossings across new highways (to avoid car collisions), costing millions of dollars, but research has not supported their efficacy. 

Random bat picture to break up the flow (from http://www.bugsbirdsandbeasts.co.uk/go-batty)

Should scientists engage policy makers? 

I do think that scientists have a responsibility to communicate, and perhaps advocate, for evidence to be used in policy decision-making. There is a line between being seen as objective versus as an advocate, and scientists need to do what they are comfortable with, but remember:

1. You are an expert on your research; you are uniquely position to comment on it.
2. Related to the previous point, you may not want other, untrained, people to represent and communicate your work.
3. You have an obligation to the public. You are likely paid by tax dollars and your research is funded by public grants. A part of the responsibility then is to not only do research but to ensure that it is communicated and if the people who ultimately pay you would benefit from learning about your findings, you owe it to them to communicate it.
4. There are positive feedbacks for your career. Being seen as a scientist who engages and does relevant work will mean that you achieve a higher profile.

Citizens and policy-makers get the most out of their new information (which forms the basis for their opinions) from media news. If the only voices being heard are advocates and interest groups, then evidence will be lacking or misrepresented. Scientists’ voices are needed in the media, and here you can educate many concerned people. The former British Education minister, Estelle Morris, when speaking about the Fukushima reactor meltdown, said that she learned more about radiation from scientific experts in the media than she had during her education.

Of course it is important to remember that science is only a part of the solution, human needs, economics and social values are also important. But without scientists’ involvement, evidence will not be an important part of solutions to crises. 

How to communicate

Scientists are often driven by immediate career concerns and they need to publish high profile, impactful papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. And this won’t change. But as Georgina Mace said in her presentation, overselling the implications of research in papers diminishes their value and confuses practitioners and policy makers. Policy implications contained within publications is one avenue to influence policy makers, but rather than tacking on broad policy recommendations, consider consulting them before writing the paper, or even better, include them in the planning stage of the study. One speaker commented that instead of asking for a letter of support for a grant proposal from a non-academic partner at the 11^th hour, discuss the ideas with them at the outset.

How should scientists communicate their research?

1. Discuss finings with local interest groups (e.g., park managers).
2. Give a public lecture to community organizations (e.g., naturalist club).
3. Talk to local politicians.
4. Use social media –create a persona that acts as an information broker.
5. Write opinion articles for magazines or newspaper editorials.
6. Be accessible to journalists (e.g., get yourself listed in your university expert database).

The UK as a model

The UK provides one of the best examples of meaningful interactions between scientists and policy makers. Perhaps a better way to state it, is that there is a gradient of engaged individuals from pure scientist to local practitioner. There are robust organizations that span government agencies, NGOs, and universities that bring scientists and practitioners into contact with one another. They have Chief Scientific Officers and advisory groups at multiple levels of government. These groups develop the risk registry that estimates the likelihood and the potential repercussions of environmental and biological disasters or emergencies (e.g., influenza pandemic, severe drought, etc.). There is a well respected and effective Science Media Centre that organizes briefing sessions that bring scientists together with journalists on timely and important topics. These briefings result in influential news stories that sometimes challenge government policy or public sentiment (e.g., badger culls, links between vaccines and autism, etc.). This is a system to be emulated.

So, should scientists communicate their findings and engage policy makers, managers and the public. Absolutely. It may seem like you are entering uncharted territory, but believe me, your voice is desperately needed.

If you want advice, encouragement or more information, feel free to contact me.

Reining in traffic –looking to China for solutions?

Human impacts on landscapes are immense. Urban areas represent complete transformations of the geological, hydrological and ecological norms in landscapes. But while urban effects are concentrated to relatively small areas, the roads and rail lines feeding cities create a pervasive and diffuse network of negative impacts. Roads funnel rain runoff and can cause local flooding and this runoff also concentrates pollutants. Further, roads alter wildlife movement. For example, the fragmentation of formerly continuous forest in Florida is worsened by large busy roads, and black bears there are unable to move long distances to find mates. The result of this is that the Florida Black bear populations are getting smaller and more genetically inbreed.

Roads are created to meet traffic demands. The more people drive and the further they drive, the more roads we build. Cities around the world are growing, meaning that more cars are concentrated in small areas. The increase in automobile use also has direct environmental consequences. Cars, thanks to their internal combustion engines, add pollution to our local environments –carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and other toxins create smog, exacerbate respiratory ailments, and contribute to global warming.

More cars also means more traffic congestion and greater difficulty in getting from A to B, meaning that we spend more time travelling to, instead of being, somewhere. Heavy reliance on automobiles directly affects our quality life in both positive and negative ways.

1950s traffic jam in Los Angeles (from Wikipedia)

Given the undesirable consequences of cars, many cities try to reduce car use. In North America, cities employ a number of strategies, including: minor improvements to public transit (while often passing on the costs to riders), creating car free zones (which have been very modest in North America, whereas European cities have been much more successful –Montpellier, France is a great example), introducing tolls, and limiting parking in the city core. It is safe to say that the North American approach to dealing with traffic has been less than spectacular –just drive through Toronto or Los Angeles during rush hour.

Living in China for the past several months, I have been intrigued by how Chinese jurisdictions have dealt with traffic. And traffic was something that needed dealing with here. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, thousands of new cars were added to roads every single day.  The air quality in China is abysmal and having hundreds of millions of cars driving at the same time only make things worse. So governments in China decided to experiment with ways to reduce automobile use.

In China, much of the power to control automobiles resides with municipalities –they are the ones who set local traffic laws and issue license plates. From conversations with scientists from different regions of China, I have compiled ways different municipalities deal with traffic and reduce automobile use. Here are some of the ways that municipalities try to reduce automobile traffic:

1) Massive investments in public transit

There can be no real traffic solutions without building fast, efficient and affordable public transit. China has been a world leader in public infrastructure development over the past ten years. For example, Shanghai has one of the largest metro systems in the world, and has opened a new line every other year since 1999! They are currently building two new lines, which will give Shanghai 18 metro lines and about 400 stations. In Guangzhou, where I currently live, they also have a very modern and rapidly expanding metro system. Guangzhou currently has 8 lines with 4 more under construction! In all the Chinese cities I’ve been in, the metro systems are modern, efficient, heavily used, and very affordable. In Guangzhou, a bus ride works out to be about 35 cents US and a metro trip to the airport (the longest trip you can take in Guangzhou I believe) is about $1.15 US.

In Toronto, where I normally live, and like most other large North American cities, subway construction has not been sufficient to keep up with population growth. Local politicians seem to be unable to make the tough decisions to get public transit infrastructure built. But this infrastructure is the linchpin for any successful reduction in automobile usage.

2) Driving days

During the 2008 summer Olympics, Beijing created a system where cars were allowed on the roads only on certain days. Which days people could drive their cars depended on the last number of their license plates. This scheme was successful in reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Since then, they have periodically reinstated this policy, especially during extremely bad air pollution days. I was there in early December, and road sharing was in effect then.

3) Making license plates really, really expensive (or difficult to get).

In Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai, getting a car is easy, but getting a license plate, now there is the real hurdle. Since 2012, Guangzhou and other cities have severely limited the number of license plates issued, and now people can get a plate in one of two ways in these cities: by joining a lottery or going to an auction. In the lottery, a person submits an application and waits for the results. One person told me it took them three years to get their plate in the lottery. In the auction, the plates go to the highest bidder and the price for a license plate at auction has sky rocketed. A person told me that plates at auction now go for more than 60,000 RMB (about  $10,000 USD), which costs more than an economy car here! This person also quipped that the plates have become more of a status symbol than the actual car.

4) Your license plate will die

In Guangzhou and other cities, license plates expire. No, not like they expire in North America where you pay an annual license fee. They expire after 10 years and are no longer valid, and the driver must re-enter the lottery. 

5) Pay the toll

Many of the intercity highways have tolls here. While this is not a policy that affects travel behaviour within cities, it does influence driver choices traveling outside the city. Tolls only work when there are decent alternatives, and the rail system in China is excellent. There are frequent trains and many high speed lines in operation (where the trains go faster than 250 km/h). We don't have many toll roads in Ontario, but the one we have near Toronto, hwy 407, doesn't go into the city (so doesn't influence commuter decisions), and does not have viable options for alternative travel. This highway is an example of poor government policy and it was one of the worst policy decisions by a government who thought private companies should run public infrastructure. Its nothing more than a cash grab that doesn't serve the broader good. But I digress.

I have been struck by the variety of approaches and the experimental nature of policy making. What I mean by experimental, is that some policies seem to be ‘test run’ to see how people respond and if the policies result in the desired effects. China is able to institute creative and extreme measures because of the government’s unique ability to change policy without public debate. Often these policies are instituted overnight with little warning. In China, people seem to take government edicts with a “well, what can you do?” attitude. But if there is a country that can change the automobile culture, China is a good candidate. They did change what a family was with the one-child policy.

While most North Americans would certainly have a problem with the lack of transparency and seemingly impulsive nature of government decisions, China is providing the world with working examples of how to reduce the number of automobiles. It is clear to most, that without strong governmental leadership, a robust set of policies, and massive infrastructure investment, heavy automobile traffic will be unavoidable.

To fence or not to fence, that is the question*

The stereotypical view of African drylands is often of a parade of elephants marching steadily across endless expanse of savannah grassland –free to roam. Another staple image, especially of African savannah documentaries, is the massive wildebeest migration where thousands of individual animals moving as an aggregation navigating the hazards of the landscape.

Majestic African animal migrations. Main image: "Wildebeest-during-Great-Migration" by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen - Own work by uploader, http://bjornfree.com/galleries.html. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Inset: By Amoghavarsha amoghavarsha.com (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In both of these examples, animals are moving with purpose for food and water, because this is how an animal survives in a place where rainfall and vegetation are seasonably variable. These migrations are vital to the survival of many dryland species. But even at smaller scales, and much less dramatically than a massive migration, animals need to move through a landscape to access food, water and mates.

Yet, as human populations spread their influence by altering ecosystems, they increasingly come in contact with wildlife, and often compete with them for space, water and agricultural crops. To reduce these human-wildlife conflicts, people often erect fences to exclude species and steer them elsewhere. Farmers and ranchers, concerned with their livelihood, need to exclude grazers from crops and predators from domesticated animal herds.

Example of a dryland fence barrier. From: Photo by William I. Boarman, USGS, From press release: USGS Report Finds Too Few Studies Assess the Success of Desert Tortoise Recovery Actions, Aug. 10, 2006. http://online.wr.usgs.gov/ocw/g_agassizii/barrier_fence.jpg

While fencing might offer some protection to human interests, fences can also have broad long-term consequences for animal populations. However, it is also increasingly appreciated that fencing can be used as a conservation measure to protect animals from these conflicts and from illegal hunting. In a thoughtful paper on dryland fencing policy, Durant and colleagues argue that current fencing policies are often based on limited information, with an under appreciation of the large-scale, long-term consequences of fencing nature.

Durant and colleagues argue that fencing can result in multiple costs and benefits. They cite an important example –fencing to protect lions. Fences constructed as a lion conservation tool may result in higher lion population sizes –which seems to valid fencing as a conservation tool; but yet analyses showed that when carrying capacities are accounted for, fences may not provide better protection, and further may not be worth the economic and ecological costs.

Lions of the Masai Mara –do they benefit from fences? Photo by Benh LIEU SONG (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons    

 The authors recommend that fencing policy needs to driven by evidence, and not a reaction to human-wildlife conflict alone. The critical factors that they suggest are: 1) Economic sustainability of erecting and maintaining fences, and that the benefits justify the costs; 2) The permeability of the barrier, because not all species will equally perceive the fence as a hard edge, and so a fence may not be a well justified as a universal management tool; 3) Using fencing within a landscape context –fences may complicate how animals deal with natural features, such as cutting off a natural river crossing; 4) Connectivity is critical for both the maintenance of genetic variability within populations and allowing animals to access variable and ephemeral resources; 5) Ensuring that fences do not interfere with or reduce the delivery of ecosystem services; and finally 6) Safeguarding the wellbeing of human communities, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups that might depend on resources from natural areas.

By creating international policy and regulations based on these six criteria, Durant and colleagues argue that sensible fencing policy can be developed, which ensures that fences are used to maximally benefit humans, animals and natural processes.

 *Note -this post was originally written for the Applied Ecologist's Blog.